On the morning of 16 May 2026, the day after Chief Justice Surya Kant's "youngsters like cockroaches" remark, a 30-year-old PR student in Boston pulled an all-nighter, registered a movement and a Twitter handle, and asked a printer in Pune whether they could ship 200 black t-shirts by the weekend. The shirt that came off that print run is now the closest thing CJP has to a uniform: the Main Bhi Cockroach original tee.
The slogan, in four words
"Main Bhi Cockroach" — मैं भी कॉकरोच, literally "I too am a cockroach" — was the reply nobody at the bar in the CJI's hearing expected. It is in the same lineage as "Main Bhi Anna" and "Main Bhi Chowkidar", but it inverts the genre. Earlier sloganeering was about borrowing the prestige of a figurehead. This one borrows the insult and wears it. As one early buyer put it on Twitter: "It's the only political tee where wearing it is the joke and the policy at the same time."
For a fuller breakdown of why the slogan landed at scale, see our explainer on what 'Main Bhi Cockroach' actually means.
What the original tee looks like
The original is the simplest piece in the CJP shop. There are no graphics, no skyline, no mascot — just type. Bold cream lettering on charcoal black cotton. The fabric is 240 GSM combed cotton, slightly heavier than the high-street fast-fashion tee you might be picturing. The fit is drop-shoulder oversized, unisex, screen-printed for 50-plus wash durability. It is built to be worn to a meet-up, photographed for an Instagram story, washed, and worn to college on Monday.
"We were not designing a fashion piece. We were designing a placard you can wear in the metro and not get stopped." — CJP merch team, May 2026
Why charcoal, not pure black?
Pure black tees photograph as a flat void under most Indian indoor light. Charcoal — a dense, very dark grey — retains contrast on phone cameras and reads cleaner against the cream type. It also fades more honestly. Three months in, the shirt looks like you have worn it, not like it has died.
Who is wearing it
The first 200 units sold out before the printer shipped them, mostly to the Boston-Mumbai-Bangalore axis. Reorders since have a different demographic shape: UPSC aspirants in Delhi's Mukherjee Nagar, NEET coaching students in Kota, college-society heads in Pune and Hyderabad, and a surprising long tail of working professionals in their early thirties who do not normally buy political merch.
- Students and aspirants — the core. The tee reads as a CV statement: I read the news, I have opinions, I am not afraid of a satire piece.
- Young women in metros — pairing the oversized fit with cargos and Birkenstocks. CJP's 55% women's reservation tee often goes in the same cart.
- Honorary members — TMC MPs Mahua Moitra and Kirti Azad have both been photographed with the card; expect the shirt at the next rally photo-op.
The print, up close
The slogan sits chest-high, centred, in a single weight — not the all-caps shout you see on most political merch, but a quieter, slab-serif treatment. The cream ink uses a slightly elevated layer to give the type a low tactile bump; you can run a finger across it. The label inside is unbranded — by design. The shirt does not advertise anything to the wearer. The wearer advertises something to everyone else.
How it pairs with the rest of the line
The original tee is the entry point. Once it is in the wardrobe, the rest of the lineup makes sense:
- The Secular Socialist Democratic Lazy tee — for when you want the full ideology in four words.
- The Main Bhi Cockroach hoodie — same slogan, winter layer.
- The cadre badge bundle — five 38mm pins for the people in your group chat who want the merch but not the photograph.
The political read
Political t-shirts in India are usually issued top-down: a party prints, cadres receive, photographs are taken. The Main Bhi Cockroach tee inverts that. The shirt was reverse-engineered from a meme, not from a press release. People bought it before any rally. The wearer is the rally. That is unusual enough to deserve the label "original" — and it is why CJP has resisted retiring the design even as new SKUs roll out.
If you have read the five-point manifesto and the founder's note, the shirt is not a souvenir. It is the smallest possible commitment device: every time you wear it, somebody asks. Every time somebody asks, you explain. Every explanation is a recruitment.
Want the original? Buy the Main Bhi Cockroach tee →